Turkey
Turkey is a largely Muslim Middle Eastern Nation loacated in the Eastern Mediteranian. It borders on the Black Sea to the North, and shares land borders with Syria and Iraq to the south, the USSR and Iran to the East and Greece to the west. It is a Presidential Republic History After the second World War, things looked positive for Turkey. Attaturk's sucessor İsmet İnönü, successuflly instituted a multi party system and Turkey looked to be on it's way to becoming a stable power. In 1950, Inonu was voted out in favour of the Democratic Party, under Menderes. The Menderes government was very popular at first, relaxing the restrictions on Islam and presiding over a booming economy. In the later half of the decade, however, the economy began to fail and the government introduced censorship laws limiting dissent. The government became plagued by high inflation and a massive debt. On May 27, 1960 General Cemal Gürsel led a military coup d'état removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, the second of whom was executed. The system returned to civilian control in October of 1961. The political system that emerged in the wake of the 1960 coup was a fractured one, producing a series of unstable government coalitions in parliament alternating between the Justice Party of Süleyman Demirel on the right and the Republican People's Party of İsmet İnönü and Bülent Ecevit on the left. A new coup was staged in 1971, and in the 1970s under Prime Minister Ecevit in coalition with the religious National Salvation Party, Turkey carried out an invasion of Cyprus. This was to prove to ,debateably, be the single most catastrophic decision Turkey had made since the First World War. After a humiliating defeat at the hands of the rebuilt Greek state at the hands of the Greek King Dilios, the Turks were pushed back and completely off Cyprus. Furious the government ordered an invasion of the Greek mainland, but this was to prove to be an equally disastourous defeat. The Turkish conscript army simply could not match up to the disciplined, trained from birth, Greek soldiers. After a major defeat at the Siege of Kavala, the Turkish Army was decimated. The Greeks marched almost unopposed to Istanbul, from which the government had allready fled, and then crossed the Bosporus and began capturing parts of the mainland. Naval invasions also took place at Mugla. Facing a civil revolt, and with the government still missing, the opposition leader Recep Ilya signed a peace treaty with the Greeks ceding all of Thrace, part of Mugla and the east coast of the Bosporus, meaning the Greeks had full control over the important waterway. Under it Turkey lost most of it's remaining Greek population, it's economic center and about 5% of it's land. Ilya's peace treaty was unpopular and he survived several assassination attempts at the hands of the military. However, the military was even more unpopular and it never gained popular support in it's attempts to coup Ilya. Riots took place all over turkey and it looked like the nation would collapse and be divided up between the Greeks and the Soviets. Fortunately for Ilya, however, salvation came in the form of a terrorist bomb. The Kurdish seperatists had decided the time was right for their movement to make a stand and a bomb directed at a government convoy destroyed a coach full of school children. The people untied in the face of this threat and the anger of millions of humiliated and fruoius people was poured into Turkish Kurdistan. Thousands of Kurds died, many more fled, andyone suspected of terrorism wa put in labour camps. Denied of their manpower and infrastructure, the terrorist attacks stopped. More importantly, however, Ilya had finally gained the support of the people, his victory over the Kurds was celebrated, and many harped it as a show that Turkey was not beaten yet. Over the next two decades, under Ilya's leadership Turkey has begun a slow recovery. Its stability has improved and occasional riots and coup attempts generally acheive nothing. Relations with Greece and the Soviet Union have remained at all time lows. though it is reported that the Greek government supports Ilya, they would never say it as it would be effectively signing his death warrant. However, Turkey's relations with it's Arab neighbors have become better. Overall, the Turksih people are still bitter and humiliated. Many still bay for blood and demand a return to the glories of the Ottoman Empire. Many others reject this and say the country should remain peacefull and build up it's economy. One thing is for sure, as President Ilya nears his 69th birthday he and his sucessors are going to ave a hell of a job.